Red Wolf_ A Novel - Liza Marklund [89]
But she had allowed herself to be intoxicated by the terrible sweetness of power, had turned her back on him. Now he turned his back on her childhood home and left the houses behind him; walked jauntily on towards the heritage trail alongside the campsite, and stopped by a heap of ploughed snow. He looked into the thin pine trees.
The remains of Norrbotten’s first ironworks could just about be glimpsed as grey foundations. He saw the spiky fragments sticking out of the snow, twisted wreckage from mankind’s vain desire to govern its own fate.
The history of the ironworks was short and violent. Several hundred people worked here just before the turn of the last century, working to purify the iron ore found in the area. Southern Swedish ironmasters bought the factory after the First World War, stripped it of its machines and equipment, sold the workers’ housing and quite literally blew the ironworks up.
Some people are allowed to blow things up. Not everyone, though.
There was another jolt of pain in his diaphragm, and he realized he was freezing. The medicine was wearing off; he ought to get back to the cabin. He was suddenly aware of his smell again; it had got much worse in recent days. His mood sank when he thought about the dry nutritional powder he was forced to live off. This was no life.
Today was exactly three months since the diagnosis.
He shook off the thought and carried on walking, towards the pulp mill.
All that was left today was the warehouses, the shameful great buildings that were lent to the Germans during the war to store munitions and supplies. Weapons, grain, tins of food: the Nazis could stash them here and collect them for their troops in Norway or the Soviet Union. Thirty men from the town had worked here, Karina’s father among them. She had always claimed that it was working for the Germans that drove her father to drink.
Excuses, he thought. Man has his own free will. He can choose to do or not do anything, except death.
And he had chosen, and his choice was to fight against imperialism with death as his means of expression, death as a tool against people who in turn had chosen to impose oppression and captivity upon his brothers and sisters.
Brothers and sisters, he thought.
He grew up a single child, but eventually he acquired a family anyway. Created his own flock, the only one he had ever taken responsibility for, and the only one he had betrayed.
The pain settled into his stomach; his lack of responsibility afflicted his body and made it heavy. He turned back towards the campsite, walking with painful steps back to reception.
What sort of father was he? He had left his flock to fend for themselves, had fled as soon as things started to heat up around him.
The Black Panther, he thought, stopping beside the snow-covered mini-golf course to catch his breath, letting his lost children come to him. His heir and eldest son, the most impatient and restless of them, the most uncompromising, the Panther had taken his name from the freedom fighters in the USA. There had been some discussion about that in the group; someone had claimed that calling yourself something American was counter-revolutionary. The Panther himself claimed the opposite, said that taking the name of America’s own critics supported the fight against the lackeys of capitalism.
Personally he had remained on the sidelines, watching the others argue. When they couldn’t agree he cast the deciding vote and sided with the Panther.
His chest grew thick and tight when he thought about how the young revolutionary had changed. Without his leader the Black Panther had become a mere shadow instead of a force to be reckoned with.
The other children had gone their separate ways, had ended up far from their ideals. Worst of all was the White Tiger. The middle-aged Tiger was so different from the skinny boy he remembered that he almost suspected they had switched him for someone else.
He walked slowly towards his cabin, the smallest one, called